I tried the offline build editing. It's pretty nice, especially where it highlights the skill I was planning to get next. It'll be great for heroes I don't play often.

Tooling around in a bots only game and had an interesting experience. We were pushing a tower when all the bots wandered off. I had been building huge piles of Plague Wards as Veno just outside of tower range. They would wipe out the enemy creep wave letting our creeps go in on the tower. Eventually the enemy bots got tired of my solo pushing their tower and sent Juggernaut after me. I Galed him as he ran through my wards and then ran away. The wards took him down.

Makes me think a good use for Veno is to build "towers" of plague wards behind the creep line (out of range of the creeps to avoid stealing farm) that can be retreated to if threatened. Since the wards are behind our creep line the enemy doesn't get free farm off them. Since they are out of range of the creep line they don't steal farm from the carry. Essentially always be near a tower, where-ever you go.

And I might be right there with you, Cask . This weekend seemed to be pretty bad, one of the worst I can remember, for DOTA. Deckard Cain was just the icing (he messaged me after the game asking why you were not happy with the term he was using. When I echoed your sentiments, he said something about Penn Gillette and raged off of steam).

But again, it wasn't just him. There was a pretty terrible Russian team I got paired with, a vehemently racist Pudge, and that terrible Slardar. I think I'm going to have to go at least four man or not at all. Conjecture: The latest spam or DOTA invites spawned some really terrible people? Also, so many invites might dilute the potence of banning.

OR maybe I should just dial back the amount of DOTAing I do. When I'm losing as silencer, I know somethings wrong.

And I might be right there with you, Cask . This weekend seemed to be pretty bad, one of the worst I can remember, for DOTA. Deckard Cain was just the icing (he messaged me after the game asking why you were not happy with the term he was using. When I echoed your sentiments, he said something about Penn Gillette and raged off of steam).

But again, it wasn't just him. There was a pretty terrible Russian team I got paired with, a vehemently racist Pudge, and that terrible Slardar. I think I'm going to have to go at least four man or not at all. Conjecture: The latest spam or DOTA invites spawned some really terrible people? Also, so many invites might dilute the potence of banning.

OR maybe I should just dial back the amount of DOTAing I do. When I'm losing as silencer, I know somethings wrong.

He just tried to provide an intellectual justification for why it was ok for him to use the term, because of course he isn't insulting homosexuals. But he sounds no different than those that are, so any justification matters very little to me. As I've said before, it doesn't come from any particular sensitivity I have to the term, but I no longer feel ok passively allowing it to be the norm. I'm sure that he also thinks his casual racism is clever, so that exempts him from that as well. I don't dwell on it, but I can't be quiet about it either. His usual trolling of the other team gets a bit old, but his lack of communication and coordination with the team is what frustrated me most last night. But none of it was to the point that I'd never play with the guy again.

Looking back, I realize that I was 2-2 yesterday, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it felt when I logged off. It's just how thoroughly we were dissected in that last game and how incapable we seemed to be to respond to it. I was also aggravated by Barash's over-aggression in laning instead of just giving Alchemist the room to farm. Mostly because I knew that there is no way to have the conversation with him to change that strategy (like maybe taking Shallow Grave if they keep diving on us). With their team spending so much time roaming looking for kills in the early game, we just needed to try to play safe - we had a lot more carry than they did. Also, we should have had Silencer getting his levels and farm in mid instead of competing with Slardar bottom. But I felt helpless in terms of not only coming up with a plan to counter the opponent, but then getting the team to implement it if we had one. Hell, proper warding would have taken us 80% of the way there. Observers in the usual locations plus sentries up in lane would have probably been enough.

As for the rest of the weekend, there were half a dozen games with my brother on Saturday, which isn't bad in and of itself, but we all know that it can be a bit draining to do a lot of games in a row with a new player and the corresponding matchmaking pain it can cause. This was exacerbated by the fact that we were able to claw our way into a couple of those matches only to have some critical misplays make the difference in the dying moments of the match. I'm not saying that we shouldn't queue with Coyote, but it might be worth switching it up after a few matches, if people are feeling frustrated.

Heck, just talking through some of these things makes me feel a little more hopeful. But that may just be the addict in me talking.

Speaking of difficult conversations, in the interest of improving as a player, I want to ask for one thing (or more) about how I play that others feel is ineffective or frustrating? I'm going to try to be thick skinned about it, so don't worry about offending me. I may still disagree, but I'd like to at least have the discussion.

On my part if you see me online I desperately want to group up but am avoiding forcing myself on stronger players. So if you feel up to taking on a newbie please invite me. Don't assume I'm not pinging you because I want some alone time.

I try to play my part of the game as best I can and I have better and worse games (Like misreading Ogre Mage's abilities). For those games where it seems like we won some teamfights but then lost the game I don't know why or how much I contributed.

Although it is not the end all be all of stats, looking at GPM and XPM after the game can usually give you a telltale sign. I've had games where you win almost every team fight, because it's 5v4 and their carry is off farming by himself for 25 minutes and then is so strong at the end of the game he just rolls over you.

On my part if you see me online I desperately want to group up but am avoiding forcing myself on stronger players. So if you feel up to taking on a newbie please invite me. Don't assume I'm not pinging you because I want some alone time.

I try to play my part of the game as best I can and I have better and worse games (Like misreading Ogre Mage's abilities). For those games where it seems like we won some teamfights but then lost the game I don't know why or how much I contributed.

From my perspective, feel free to ask but don't be too discouraged by the times where I'm not up to it. But, I don't know if others are as comfortable being an asshole. I'm just basing it on when I was a new player coming up. I'd love to group up with more experienced players, but never wanted to frustrate them too badly so encouraged them to turn me down if they wanted to. I'm hoping that the other folks coming up feel the same way. Because dota 2 can be extremely draining emotionally, as sad as that may seem.

As for giving you more feedback on what happened in those games, that's tougher. When you are in the middle of it, it's hard to evaluate someone else's play or even the larger flow of the game. You really need to go back and try to look at things objectively.

As for teamfights, you need to be able to convert teamfight wins into some other advantage. Push a tower or rax, or take Roshan. We were on our heels for many of those games, so often when we would win a teamfight, we could only manage to push the creep wave out a bit past the river before the other team was alive. And because we were so defensively positioned, they were able to keep up their farm rate to ensure they maintained their level and gold edge. Also, when you are behind like that you have to keep winning teamfights because if you lose one, they are often better positioned to turn that in to advantage (generally taking roshan or a rax) and possibly even an out and out win if they can push to your throne quickly enough.

Yeah Barash is super aggressive, and always goes for the kill super early -- even when it'd be better to just farm. And then switches over to farming the jungle to make up for it, blocking out the Hard carry if there is one. I'll try to mention it to him.

CASK! Pick a game from over the weekend! We can watch the replay together and faux broadcast it, and tear your gameplay apart! Other's can watch while we do it. CAN YOUR EGO TAKE IT?

And yeah we won a few-- like the game you played Drow. Were we won because of strategy that I will claim as my own -- you farming solo and pushing while team-teamfight held and pushed the middle. Good for you to ignoring the cries for help. Seriously. I knew once we could get our Ults snyced they were done for.

Coyote you're fine. Hit me up for a game or two-- but dont be offended if I wander off after that. Also feel free to listen to me and Cask tear cask apart. And you too if you're in the game.

I actually won a solo-queue game as lifestealer. Unfortunately there was an early abandon so no stats. Which is ok since I had a triple kill stolen by a feeding Drow Ranger. It was an interesting change to play a carry. Unfortunately the whole team was carries and refused to buy a courier or upgrade it and I was laned with a super aggressive auto-attacking feeding Morphling.

Yeah Barash is super aggressive, and always goes for the kill super early -- even when it'd be better to just farm. And then switches over to farming the jungle to make up for it, blocking out the Hard carry if there is one. I'll try to mention it to him.

CASK! Pick a game from over the weekend! We can watch the replay together and faux broadcast it, and tear your gameplay apart! Other's can watch while we do it. CAN YOUR EGO TAKE IT?

And yeah we won a few-- like the game you played Drow. Were we won because of strategy that I will claim as my own -- you farming solo and pushing while team-teamfight held and pushed the middle. Good for you to ignoring the cries for help. Seriously. I knew once we could get our Ults snyced they were done for.

Coyote you're fine. Hit me up for a game or two-- but dont be offended if I wander off after that. Also feel free to listen to me and Cask tear cask apart. And you too if you're in the game.

I'll do that. And it doesn't have to be a faux broadcast. I can actually stream it to twitch and capture vids for youtube - though the restriction to break it up in 15 minute segments on Youtube is annoying.

I find that when I am playing carry I am often pushing other lanes for farm and advantage while encounters are happening elsewhere on the map. But many times those encounters elsewhere on the map are happening without any particular purpose behind them so it seems to be effective. But, it's something I'm trying to stay aware of and make sure that I'm not absent for important team fights. Also, with Drow, if I am pushing uncontested, that's another 10 damage I'm giving to all our ranged heroes. I never had any doubt about whether I should have been joining the team fights. Even if the 4 wiped entirely, it was a good trade if we took down rax. And they couldn't really push their advantage because they still needed to defend. And with shadow blade they were unlikely to even catch me out. At least I finally experienced an OP drow match, even if I do find her pretty boring.

Off the head list with context:
Drow --most effective in a team with mucho ranged people (which everyone but me was that match)
Spectre -- can pop across the map lickity split
Centaur -- once he's got some strength stacked his ulti is good for decent damage to the enemy team
Troll -- best with right clickers

I favor most of those characters now that I think about it. 'cept Drow. She is, as you mentioned, a bit of a bore.

I have a three hour video up on Youtube. I think it has to do with how many videos you've posted and how many views. Get enough views and they reduce, then lift the restrictions. I think my painting tutes got me enough views to get some longer record times.

I'm going to give feedback now, so if you don't want feedback from a noob stop reading. I promise not to say anything important after the feedback. Heck, did I say anything important before?

I would have liked more communication. It doesn't have to be a leadership thing. Just making sure everyone is on the same page really helps. If I had communicated what my plans were I'm sure someone could have helped me out or warned me. If someone else had communicated their plans I could have made sure I was in position to help. For example, they were pushing our top tower and Videohead said we were going to defend and to get in position. I thought that meant get in position to hit them all at once and moved to flank. If I had said that's what I was doing someone may have been able to correct me in time.

The benefits are obvious to someone who is learning the game. However I don't think it's wise to assume even experienced players are on the same page so communicating is key.

I haven't watched anyone stream their games of competitive DOTA 2 so I don't know what the communication is like in game. I used to watch a bunch of Gears 3 stuff where even the broadcasters would listen in on a team to hear the communication and that was a constant stream of chatter and calling out enemy positions.

A couple of times I've played with you guys, I've been kicked from the matchmaking group just as I'm about to leave.

The thing is, I'm usually typing something as I'm kicked. It's like having someone hang up on you during a phone conversation: it feels like a "f*ck you", and leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

I know there's no ill intent, and I realize you guys want to grab someone else and queue for matchmaking, but other people might not be as understanding.

A quick note for the last game I played, where we had Warlock and Tide on our team:

Yes, they both have AOE disables, and yes, if they stack correctly we will have a huge teamfight advantage, but we shouldn't initiate a fight unless we KNOW we can win it. At least twice three of us initiated a 3v4 (one was a 3v5) and got our asses handed to us. That's 6 kills for the other team. I'm not saying we can't do it, but there is so little margin for error in those situations that it's better to avoid them.

One thing I hear professional players say over and over to new players is "Never enter a fair fight. If you're going to gank or teamfight, make sure you have every possible advantage." We're already at a numbers disadvantage, and we definitely didn't have a gold or XP advantage, so why push our luck?

One Coyote: sorry if I wasn't communicating more to you. But things are hectic, and I'm having plenty of trouble controlling my own guy, then to explain whats going on with ogre. We do communicate more, but it requires some more base familiarity to move beyond that. If you want me to be more hands on, We're going to have to go into a bot match. The matchmaking will pretty much screw us over if explaining basic concepts.

Two Dead. Here's the logic behind those team fights -- maybe I didn't properly articulate it in game. We needed to engage in those fights. And frankly, none of those fights were fair. We should have destroyed each time. We lost two (fed as you said) then completely destroyed on the third fight, when they had already been fed? They even had the geographic advantage in that fight. The reasoning was sound, the execution needed work.

And if we'd have backed off, they would have noticed and destroyed cask ---which is how we won the game. I know it was frustrating but, frankly it worked. Eventually.

And as for the Kicking. That's me. I only do it after everyone has said goodbye. And also I've received like 6 messages for the space. So....type faster? Or use steam chat? Or say good bye/I'm leaving after you type said message.

I would have liked more communication. It doesn't have to be a leadership thing. Just making sure everyone is on the same page really helps. If I had communicated what my plans were I'm sure someone could have helped me out or warned me. If someone else had communicated their plans I could have made sure I was in position to help. For example, they were pushing our top tower and Videohead said we were going to defend and to get in position. I thought that meant get in position to hit them all at once and moved to flank. If I had said that's what I was doing someone may have been able to correct me in time.

A quick note for the last game I played, where we had Warlock and Tide on our team:

Yes, they both have AOE disables, and yes, if they stack correctly we will have a huge teamfight advantage, but we shouldn't initiate a fight unless we KNOW we can win it. At least twice three of us initiated a 3v4 (one was a 3v5) and got our asses handed to us. That's 6 kills for the other team. I'm not saying we can't do it, but there is so little margin for error in those situations that it's better to avoid them.

One thing I hear professional players say over and over to new players is "Never enter a fair fight. If you're going to gank or teamfight, make sure you have every possible advantage." We're already at a numbers disadvantage, which also means we're at a gold and XP disadvantage, so why push our luck?

We can be a bit hopeful with team fights at times. We should work on that.